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Hyderabad
Monday, December 28, 2015

IN FOCUS

SPECTRUM

THEATRE EXPLORES
UNCONVENTIONAL
SPACES P2

RANJANI RAJENDRA, SOORAJ RAJMOHAN AND NIKHIL VARMA

Big Basket
Hari Menon, Co-founder and
CEO

Groceries at the click of a button? For the co-founders of Big

Basket, it was the one area that
had remained untapped despite
the e-commerce boom. With years
of experience heading a successful
grocery chain, till they sold it to
the Aditya Birla group, Hari Menon, Abhinay Choudhary, Vipul
Parekh, V.S. Ramesh and V.S. Sudhakar decided to grab the opportunity and launch what is now one
of the countrys most successful
online grocery stores.
The eco-system was ready for
an e-commerce boom, says Hari.
While the company formally
launched in 2011, in Bangalore, it
wasnt until earlier this year that
they began to expand and gain recognition. By late 2014 they were
operational in Hyderabad and by
early this year they had begun delivering groceries in Chennai,
Pune and NCR. Big Basket has expanded operations to 12 cities and
according to Hari, by January
2016 they will be up and about in
as many as 28 cities, including 20
tier-II cities.
The company, which recently
introduced the 60-minute delivery option, is looking to increase
customer satisfaction by introducing their latest feature the
speciality store marketplace.
People will always rely on neighbourhood stores for specific
things like meat or bakery items.
Our new feature will now let them
choose to have products delivered
from these very stores through
us, explains Hari.
Swiggy
Nandan Reddy, Co-founder

Want to eat your favourite dish

from your favourite restaurant?

Just pick up your smartphone.

With Swiggy entering the market,
with their no minimum order feature and a wide network of restaurants, ordering in has only gotten
more hassle-free. Started by Nandan Reddy, Sriharsha Majety and
Rahul Jaimini, the latest entrant
in the food delivery sector has
managed to win smiles across cities. Id credit that to our commitment to deliver on time and
our network with restaurants,
says Nandan Reddy. The trio was
initially running an aggregator of
courier companies. But we wanted to build something hyperlocal
and the food sector is a big one.
We started operations in the Koramangala area of Bangalore after
having tied up with 25 of the best
restaurants there. The growth has
been phenomenal, he explains.
As of now, Swiggy is focussing
on consolidating itself in the top
eight markets that it has a presence in, ensuring better technology,
better
catalogue
of
restaurants and an even better delivery time.
Oyo Rooms
Ritesh
Agarwal,
Founder
and CEO
During
his travels
across India, Ritesh
Agarwal realised that
there was
no set standard of service
and
amenities
that travellers could expect from
hotels, leading him to
strike upon the idea of
standardising hotel
accommodation. Noting a trust deficiency
among
customers
when it came to booking hotels remotely,
Ritesh started Oyo
Rooms, a branded hotel network, to offer
customers a predictable, affordable and an
accessible
experience. Since its launch
in May 2013, with a
personal investment
and a grant he received as a Thiel Fellow
(created
by
PayPal founder Peter
Thiel, which provides
college dropouts under 22 with $1,00,000
to implement their

CINEMA

KANCHANA TO BE
REMADE IN THREE
FOREIGN LANGUAGES P3

Twas a good start

OFFBEAT HITS
AND MISSES
OF 2015 P4

Haptik
Aakrit Vaish, Co-founder and
CEO

From food delivery services to self-drive car rentals and even

hotel room bookings, several entrepreneurs turned their ideas
into successful ventures. We take a look at five start ups that
shot up to the big league in 2015

READY TO DELIVER A snapshot of the Big Basket warehouse

ideas), Oyos valuation has multiplied 15 times this year, with the
network now covering 160 Indian
cities through 40,000 rooms in
4,000 hotels. Ritesh says that the

turning point in their journey

came when, SoftBanks $100 million investment helped cement
our reputation as a start-up with a
promise. Close on the heels of this,

we were listed by New York Times

among the next 50 potential unicorns (a start-up with a valuation
in excess of one billion U.S. dollars).

With messaging becoming the

primary form of communication a
few years ago, Aakrit Vaish realised the medium had potential beyond regular communication.
After toying with the idea of a
chat-based customer support and
realising that users preferred a
one-stop solution for their needs,
he started Haptik, a personal assistant that relies on a team of
experts using instant messaging
to help users across multiple categories, such as movies, food, travel, recharges, shopping, gifts and
repairs. Starting off with a seed
capital of $60,000, Haptik went
on to secure $1 million from Kalaari Capital. With over 5, 00,000
downloads and 1, 25,000 active
users, Haptik employs a team of
200 experts to handle chats. It is
now in the process of closing another round of funding to enhance
capabilities in what is turning into
a hotly-contested segment, with
even tech-heavyweights like Facebook set to enter the personal assistant fray in the near future.
According to Aakrit, it was the
launch that changed things for

them. Even though we had the

idea four years ago, we were not
sure how it would be used by people and sceptical about its potential. But when we finally launched
two years ago, the response was
overwhelming, he says.
Zoomcar
Greg Moran, Co-founder
When Greg Moran and David
Beck were looking for a good business idea four years ago, India and
Bangalore came to their mind.
Greg says, We used car rentals in
Pennsylvania and saw a huge opportunity
in India,
where
public
transport
is not adequate and
not everyone owns
a car. We
felt that
the huge
migrant
population that makes up the workforce
of major cities in India will lap up
a self-driven car service and we
started operations in Bangalore in
2013. We have managed to expand
to seven cities, says the
30-year-old.
Zoomcar follows a membership-based system that allows
customers to hire cars via the
website or the mobile application,
with an option to choose the number of hours. Once the permits
and the licences fell into place, it
was a smooth ride in Bangalore,
Mumbai, New Delhi, Pune, Chennai and Hyderabad. We plan to
expand to more cities in 2016,
says Moran.

Admit two
Group show
Different artists
showcase their works
at an exhibition titled
Hyderabad Art
Invasion 4
Venue: Rainbow Art
Gallery, Paryatak
Bhavan, Begumpet
Date: On till
December 29; 10 am. to 8 pm.

Solo show
On display are works of Goutam Pal from
Shantiniketan, present resident artist at
Sloka, the Hyderabad Waldorf School,
Aziznagar.
Venue: Daira Centre for Arts and Culture,
Banjara Hills
Date: On till January 8, 2016; 11 am to 7
pm

Festival bhonu
The Festival Bhonu features
non-vegetarian and
vegetarian dishes, curated
by Parsi chefs.
Venue:
SodaBottleOpenerWala,
Jubilee Hills
Date: On till January 15

Phonics workshop
Vision Rainbow is organising a phonics
workshop for 6 to 10 year olds.
Venue: Lakdikapul
Date: December 28-30; 10.30am to 1pm
Register on: 9248024562
CM
YK

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